The EFF seems to think that copyright owners are trying to change the rules in court, since they have become dissatisfied with the notice-and-takedown bargain of the DMCA.

It is potential that this case will settle, like Warner’s case versus iMeem did, and there is another case on remand, Perfect 10 v. Google, that could also settle the DMCA safe harbor issue, but the real question people are asking themselves in all of this is, what’s the best alternate music search engine?

Well thankfully I have the answer for you, Woonz. Its all the search engine of all the rest, and it does it without recording your IP address, and we can all see the potential benefit to that, especially down the road.

ShareThis

The New York Times called these licenses “as coveted as oil reserves are to energy companies”.

People are mixed in the implications of the auction with some, like the Chairman of the FCC saying, “the spectrum that we are auctioning off is going to be the building blocks for the next generation of broadband services.” It can carry lots of data, penetrates walls easily, travels far and allows for very good broadband wireless service. It will allow a wireless platform to be another competitor in the broadband space.” But others aren’t so sure with Robert X. Cringley writing in Popular Mechanics that,

What’s good for voice is not always good for data, however. Lower frequencies travel farther but they inherently carry less data, having lower so-called spectral efficiency. And the way cellular providers plan out data networks is very different from the architecture of voice networks. Optimal data networks (such as the EVDO services currently run by Verizon and Sprint, and the HSDPA network run by AT&T) require smaller cells and lower power to reduce interference and increase the total data throughput not per cell but per square mile. Even the best implementations, however, have limited overall bandwidth (as one network engineer told me, “the dirty little secret of cellular data is that two customers with Slingboxes can take down an entire EVDO cell”). Networks based on the 700-MHz spectrum would be even less ideal for use as a data network in urban environments.

Inforworld has an interesting article about how the wireless spectrum auction could change your life, which sheds more light on the debate about the ultimate implications of the auction.

And then there’s the story of Google, who was successfully in helping to set the auction rules, and according to those rules some of the open access consessions, which would force openness of the spectrum to third party developers like Google, only occur if bidding or the C block(one of the blocks of spectrum) hit $4.6 billion.

Cringly believes that Google may attempt to either simply bid this minimum to make sure that this openness happens, or bid to win, and then trade the block to Sprint/Nextel for some of the company’s 2.5 GHz WiMAX licenses, which are far better suited for data.

According to Cringely, Sprint’s WiMAX strategy is in flux following the firing of CEO Gay orsee, who was a big WiMAX backer, and it gets even better with Sprint announcing the departures of their CFO, CMO, and Sales Chief effective today.

It will definately be interesting to watch, and the future of the mobile internet may be shaped by the auction. In 2006, mobile internet subscribers grow nationwide by more than 600 percent(no data is available for 2007 yet).

People can follow the daily bids of the auction(with only amounts not names of bidders) at auctions.fcc.gov(its auction 73). 

There’s also a panel that just went on at Davos World Economic Forum called the Future of Mobile Technology. With a panel that included Google CEO Eric Schmidt, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, SK Telecom CEO Kim Shin-Bae, and China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou(SK Telecom is the dominate mobile provider in Korea, and China Mobile the dominate provider in China). Both TechCrunch and BuzzMachine have interesting summaries of the panel.

The panel had very interestings opinions on the importance of mobile, with Schmidt(Google) making the claim that mobile devices are potentially more interesting than PCs, and Jianzhou(China) suggesting that people are using mobile devices as extensions of themselves. As for content, Stringer(Sony) was pessimistic about the ability to sell content on mobiles, but Zucker(NBC) was optomistic, and NBC is going to put out 2,200 hours of programming on Mobile for the olympics.

The 700-MHz auction will probably have an impact on the future of mobile communications, and we’ll see whether content will reign on the cell phone or not.

The funniest thing to come out of the panel, though, is when someone asked whether any of the companies planned to include olfactory functionality in phone since its the only scent not addressed by the internet…yeah…I know.

ShareThis

Is there anything in this analysis which will prove one piece of software is ‘more secure’ than another? No, that is not my intention…This report is a vulnerability analysis, which may provide some elements that could be part of a broader security analysis.

Fewer vulnerabilities,

make it easier to manage risk…All other things being equal, fewer patches mean more time to spend on other security projects to reduce risk.

Also in the report Jones notes that there were 360 vulnerabilities fixed in Red Hat rhe14ws(reduced), 224 in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS’ (reduced) and 116 in Mac OS X 10.4.

According to Dark Reading interviewing Rich Mogull, founder of Securosis LLC

It proves that it [Vista] is quantitatively more secure, but not that it’s quantitatively less risky — what I call security versus safety. IT managers need to know the overall risk assessment, which includes that data as well as other information sources.

I’m even more skeptical then that though, just because Vista is more secure out of the box, doesn’t mean that it’s more secure over time, maybe after time it will be but for now, I’m still going to continue to push for the saving of Windows XP.

ShareThis

Ultimately as I said before, data portability is utterly meaningless, but the news of Microsoft joining the Data Portability Working Group does confirm one thing, Microsoft’s position as an old computer company that is really behind the times. Despite Data Portability being meaningless, Microsoft should have been right on top of the bandwagon with all the others, if they are serious about this Web 2.0 stuff(which they may not be), and not lagging two weeks behind the rest.

Now Microsoft did invest $240 million in Facebook(a 1.6% stake) in October of last year, so maybe they’re just content to invest their way into the future(or the next bubble) and aren’t serious about their Web 2.0 offerings(like Windows Live Spaces and others).

Microsoft, however, has never been one for openness in other fields, just look at the current battle between OOXML and OpenDocument formats(and other open source complaints), and while not a direct analogous situation, does provide a possible reason for Microsoft’s delay(and Microsoft did join the OpenDocument Format Committee while still pushing OOXML so maybe thats it), besides its lagging behind in the web 2.0 sphere.

ShareThis

As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

The news has hit the blogosphere hard with sites not only sites in the usual Tech blogosphere covering it, but also Lifehack sites, like Lifehacker, and GHacks.

The Last.fm streaming of songs is limited to 3 plays per song, and then displays an ad for the as yet released subscription service. So its limited streaming and then subscription.

My question is, hasn’t this been tried before? Sure they have deals with all the major studios(including holdout Sony), and what they are doing with monetization of independent artists by allowing them to put up full songs for a share of advertising revenue is intriguing, but isn’t it just a retread of other sites?

Rhapsody offers a similar service for a subscription fee that has large number of songs(Last.fm purports to have 2.5 million), and so does Napster. The only real difference is that the Last.fm service is 3 plays per song instead of 25 songs a month like the free Rhapsody version, and while that is a huge leap, the new free preview service is still just that, a preview. Its not like you’re going to be able to use it to listen to as much music as you want without paying for it, any more than you already could with Last.fm, and the subscription service is on par with Rhapsody or Napster. The other difference is that unlike the others services, its browser based(although Napster has a web based version). I don’t know the price point but I wager its comparable(and probably won’t include the nice to go services of Napster and Rhapsody).

Of course Imeem already offers a similar function, and is ad supported, of course as the NYTimes points out Imeem only tracks tracks that are user uploaded, but that is hardly a barrier once the service has a significant number of people using the service.

Now if you’re using Last.fm to illegally download music you’re streaming, then this is certainty a big move, since you can use a program like Free Music Zilla to get the music you’re streaming, but you could already do that with Pandora, which has always had a larger selection of mainstream music in its streams than Last.fm that you can steal. Now its easier since you can select the tracks instead of having to wait for them in the stream, but that just means the potential for abuse is greater.

Who knows, maybe I’m wrong about this whole thing and Last.fm will succeed more than Rhapsody, Napster or even Imeem(the last one I doubt because its unlimited, although, again, user uploaded) because of their three times preview, but I highly doubt it.

ShareThis

Its not all doom and gloom though, a consortium has announced the 1000 Genomes Project, an initiative to sequence the genomes of at least 1,000 people to create a detailed picture of genetic variation.

If you’re, on the other hand, up for a little controversy, UK regulators have recently given scientists the green light to create human-animal hybrid embryos for research, and while not directly related to scientific discovery the FDA has given the A-OK to consume cloned animals.

Now for the round-up:

System Created To Thwart Nuclear Terrorism By Sensors in Cell Phone Network(At My Alma Mater Purdue)

Scientists Find Active Volcano in Antarctica

Study Shows Seawater Effective Treatment for Colds

Daily Exercise Shown to Lower Men’s Death Rates

Obesity Surgery Shown to Cure Diabetes

Regular Long-Term Aspirin Use Shown to Reduce the Risk of Colorectal Cancer

Link Between Caffeine and Miscarriage Firmed

Study Suggests Sleep Needed to Refresh Learning Potential

Researchers Use Stem Cells to Save Patient’s Legs

Scientists Make Inert Compound React: Possible Solution to Uranium Contamination Around Power Plants

Scientists Find Fitness Gene in Sheep

Ebola Virus Disarmed Through Excising One Gene

Suppressing One Gene Shown to Make Wounds Heal Faster and Scar Less

And my favourite link of the few days:

LOLCats Control Your Mind: Blame it on Evolution(and Genes)

Lesson Learned: Its all about the genes.

ShareThis

They are also saying that it may not end there, as I said earlier Hasbro is also trying to shut down the less popular Boggle game. TechCrunch is suggesting that Zynga may be next with their knockoff games of Risk(Attack!), Boggle(Scramble), and Battleship(Battleship). Zynga claims on its website that 1.4 million people play Attack!, 293,000 play Battleship, and 257,000 play Scramble(which probably means have the application installed or have accounts for it through the other ways to play).

I hope that this situation is resolved with Scrabulous selling to EA and not with the shutting down of the application. Afterall, in the 60 minutes interview Zuckerburg himself said that he has the application installed and uses it to play his grandparents, and last August, Facebook’s Carolyn Abram posted a blog entry about the Facebookites obsession with the app.

ShareThis

There is a whole series of books about bizarre idiosyncratic events like Bobby Fischer’s battle with the soviets. The book about Bobby Fischer is called “Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How a Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine”.

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I find idiosyncratic history fascinating, so I think I will.

Also interesting is that Fischer eyed a final big match. Icelanic newspaer Morgunbladid quoted a friend of Fischer as saying that hoped to play current world champion Viswanathan Anard or Garry Kasparov in a final tournament in India.  The newspaper said that Anand was very interested in playing Fischer but it had not been able to schedule it. Kasparov, on the other hand, was reported as not being able to play Fischer due to political commitments in Russia.

Its unclear to me what these political commitments are, but I did find it interesting that even after all this time political commitments would keep two chess players from playing(although things like this do occur in sports and games all the time between other nations, Israel and Palestine in Soccer for instance).

ShareThis

This is probably due in no small part to the soap opera that the race for president has become, especially on the democratic side between Obama and Clinton(both Bill and Hillary).

Race has become a huge part of the Democratic race, and with today being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and with the South Carolina(the first state primary where black voters make up a large part of the electorate) Democratic debate(sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute no less) being tonight it seemed a perfect time to explore this soap opera in more detail.

Race really wasn’t prominent in the race until Hillary Clinton’s comment in response to Obama talking about False Hope in which she said,

Dr King’s dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.

Since that time Hillary’s comments have been spun to be a direct attack on the civil rights movement, and as her saying that it look a President to get results, and not the marches or anything like that. That she was saying, Obama may be a visionary, like Dr. King, but I’m the President that will get things done.

Since that time, Hillary has seen her support amongst African-American’s drop substantially(see reactions of several pundits here and here), but black voters in the south are still split between Clinton and Obama.

Hillary’s comments, however, are just the tip of the iceberg in the drama between her and Obama. In many ways she has been engaging in a good cop, bad cop routine with Bill, from even before her comments on MLK, when he said voting for Barack Obama is voting for someone who is asking voters to “roll the dice.”

It continued in Nevada when he said this,

Today, when my daughter and I were wandering through the hotel, and all these culinary workers were mobbing us, telling us they didn’t care what they’d been told to do, they were going to caucus for Hillary, there was a representative of the organization trotting along behind us, going up to everybody that said that, and said, “If you’re not going to vote for our guy, we’re going to give you a schedule tomorrow so you can’t be there.” So is this the new politics? I haven’t seen anything like that in America in 35 years.

and when referring to Barack Obama’s position on Iraq,

Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.

Jon Meacham has a piece in Newsweek entitled, “Leading Democrats to Bill Clinton: Pipe Down” which quotes Greg Craig, President Clinton’s lawyer during impeachment as saying,

If the Hillary’s campaign can’t control Bill, how is Hillary’s White House going to control him?

Someone who spoke to Bill Clinton according to Meet the Press said,

I don’t care about this stuff, about my image as the former president. I’m going to win this campaign. I’m going to go door-to-door in the black neighborhoods of South Carolina, church-to-church

Bill Clinton is not content to let the black vote go solidly to Obama. The attacks have gotten to be so much in some people’s minds that someone has started a Clinton attacks Obama Wiki, and there’s a website that chronicles both Obama’s and Edward’s attacks on Clinton called Attacktimeline.com(paid for by Hillary Clinton for President).

Just today on the eve of the South Carolina debate, Barack has challenged Bill’s truthfulness saying,

I have to say just broadly, you know, the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. You know, he continues to make statements that aren’t supported by the facts, whether it’s about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq, or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas.

Just the day before he gave a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church, MLK’s church based on the quotation by Martin Luther King, that, “unity is the great need of the hour.”(see the full text of the speech here).

Just a few hours ago, Hillary’s adviser Wolfson, called Obama’s claim that Bill is fibbing a “Right Wing Talking Point.”

This all isn’t directly related to Bill and Obama though, with BET founder Robert L. Johnson attacking Obama, and hinting at past drug use. Comments he later apologized for and which the Clinton campaign called “out of bounds”. Still others unrelated to the campaign are questioning whether or not Obama is playing the “race card” including Times of London columnist Alice Miles.

All this framed by a backdrop of allegations of voting irregularities in Clark County, Nevada by the Clinton campaign(on top of the above allegations by Bill about Obama supporters and others), and also against two historic campaigns, leading some to question, sexism, racism: which is more taboo? Obama won in Iowa, an open process, but lost in NH despite the polls, leading some to ask, is this the Bradley effect?(and also here and here, although some have pointed out that Obama didn’t get less votes than he was polling Hillary just got more than she was, which the second link debunks) The idea that people will say they will vote for a black candidate, but in the privacy of the voting booth be unwilling to do so. Feminist Gloria Steinem wrote an article for the New York Times entitled, “Women are Never Front-Runners”. Which is more taboo is hard to say, but Obama has performed much poorer amongst older voters is it because of race?(Obama also credited his win in Iowa to the youth turnout which MSNBC confirms), and maybe it could mean a latent racism in older people, or maybe it could just be an establishment versus the new hotness(thanks Allison!).

Historians today have said to be fearing that MLK’s legacy is being lost. Gallup reports that Americans view Obama and Clinton about equally as being able to effectuate change in Washington. So, maybe the historians are right, but not just about civil rights, but judging from the above discourse in the Democratic race about unity as well.

ShareThis

Additionally, HBO just announced that they will be putting their shows and movies online at no additional charge, through a service called HBO on Broadband, to people already subscribed to HBO, it will be delivered through cable operators(and initially not available everywhere just to customers of the Wisconsin Division of Time Warner Cable). While not exactly direct competition for online rentals, HBO shows and movies are some of the most bought DVDs(and now Blu-Ray because HBO distributes through WB), and so them finally putting their shows online does have possible implications to the online rental war. The films offered for download each month will include most titles currently airing on HBO, and be available for 4-12 weeks.

Also, tomorrow is HD VMD Day, HD VMD is a new player on the HD DVD market(as if another is needed) which finally shipped earlier this month at the price point of $199(yawn).

The Downfall of HD DVD, Berlin 1945: More HD Porn Defections and Price Slashes: The video I linked to in the article has been taken down by the distributor of the film that it spoofs, Constantin Film AG, interestingly enough Constantin was the first comany to drop HD DVD and go Blu-Ray exclusive after the defection by WB. Even after the defection, Constantin(a German company) probably didn’t like the comparison of the HD DVD camp to Nazis.

Obama Compares Himself to Reagan, Still No Match for Republican Field’s Reagan Love: Its not just Edwards that has attacked Obama for his Reagan remarks, with Hillary Clinton saying, “My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years. That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years.”

Tim Russert of Meet the Press had this to say, however,

Interestingly enough, the Salmon Press in New Hampshire, which endorsed Hillary Clinton, cited as one of the reasons that, when they talked to her in the interview, she listed Ronald Reagan as one of her favorite presidents.

and Tom Brokaw plugging his book “Boom” states,

…she says that Ronald Reagan plays the music beautifully, and she talked about how he balanced the interests of the middle class and took on the Soviets. What was also in that speech, or that remark that Obama gave, I thought didn’t get enough attention probably, was how he dissed Bill Clinton.

Which is an interesting point, he does diss Clinton in his speech, claiming that he wasn’t the President of change, and Clinton himself said in 2002 after the Democrats lost the midterm elections that,

The Democrats have to have ideas to win. We are MIA, missing in action on national security and have no positive plan for America’s domestic future.

But after Obama’s remarks said,

Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas. It goes along with that plan to ask the Republicans to become Democrats for a day and caucus with you tomorrow, and then go back and become Republicans so they can participate in the Republican primary. I’m not making this up, folks.

For the full text of the entire Meet the Press conversation check out here(the Obama discussion is on page 3). But the damage of his remarks has been done. Matt Stoller on the blog Open Left questions, “Did Obama Lose Nevada Because of his Reagan Remarks?” The fallout certainly didn’t help him, especially with the Democratic base which decidedly doesn’t like Reagan.  As with the Huckabee story, I’ll be covering the Clinton-Obama race in a bit(both in regard to the race for President, and how race is playing a fundamental role in this election).

In the Stuggle of Man versus Machine, Man Becomes Machine, Machine Becomes Man, Exoskeleton Suits, Prosthetic Limbs, Lying Computers, and Computers That Will Pwn You at Unreal Tournament, Noob: io9 has an interesting, and pretty freaking video of Stephen Colbert interviewing the author of “Love and Sex wih Robots.”

ShareThis